


Strange Melodies Assault Me

by After_Baker_Street



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eventual Smut, First Kiss, M/M, Mind Palace, POV Sherlock Holmes, Poetic, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-11 13:53:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/After_Baker_Street/pseuds/After_Baker_Street
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inside the mind of Sherlock Holmes as his relationship with John Watson begins to change (and alter the world they both know).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Broken-Winged Bird

 

You circle me like a broken-winged bird, John Watson. Though you know I do not have a way with broken things. I am not like you. I do not fix what is hurt, I only find the cause. My ways are not gentle and you need gentleness.

I cannot, I could not give you what you want. I would not, though you look for me. You look for me always, even now that I’ve returned. You look for me in your dreams; you shout my name while you’re sleeping. It drives me to agony. I cannot wake you, not when you dream like that. If I try to rouse you, you stare at me, desperate and hungry. You are disoriented, your voice is heavy for the rest of the day. So I let you sleep. And those dreams turn into something else, things that tear at you, things I left you with when I was gone.

I’m sorry, John. I can’t. Yes, your bones are steel but anyone anyone anyone anyone could hurt you. Look how fragile the cage of your heart (the rib cage)! You are too soft. I warn you constantly, but you show your throat to me again and again. It only takes one hundred and three kilopascals to crush a human skull but you stand so close to me that I know (nearly) what it would taste like to kiss you.

I am (not) sorry. I am (not) grateful. You are the unwitting architect of my stability, you are my keystone. I am dangerously unbalanced without you, I operate with too many variables that cannot be defined. You bring order to the byzantine labyrinth of my thoughts (order I tried and failed to institute with cocaine).

John, your hands are small. Don’t give me that look, you know perfectly well I am capable of having two separate and distinct thoughts at one time (a skill I have not researched at length, but would guess it is present in fewer than one in five hundred people). (It is impressive that you can discern that I am not even bothering to think of the case, that skill is even more rare, perhaps you are the sole instance of it in the world.) Besides, this case is beneath me. It’s beneath you. We should take the telephone number off the website. Our names and a phone number? It’s practically asking for useless cases like this.

Tell them your theory about the money laundering. Oh, you might want to mention that the cleaning lady was certainly not an employee of the American Secret Service, as they suspected (obviously Romanian, look at her shoes!). You are correct, of course, but your information is not complete without that detail.

I am proud of you at times like these (pride like a spike of silver through my tongue), though we both know it is only under my tutelage that you have truly begun to develop your deductive reasoning skills. You know my methods. You apply them. And you know when I need silence. When a case has overstepped the bounds of damned normality and into something more, something new and raw.

But this case is not (new/raw/exciting). It is not even taxing me in the slightest. It is so dull I can spend this time staring at your hands. They are small, and square. Much like you, actually. Sensible. I have studied your hands. In the unlikely event that I were prompted (you were injured somehow, and your hands must be surgically reconstructed? No, the thought is repellant, worse than repellant - it curls around my gut like nausea, like smoke and grit on my area postrema), I could produce a photorealistic sketch of them (your hands, not my medullary structures) in six minutes, four if time was critical. You are not vain or overly careful about your hands (though many surgeons are); you do not care when you scar your knuckles fighting along side (for) me. You are proud of those scars, they are tiny prizes you carry away. Prizes that you revisit, stroking one hand with your clever, blunt fingers, remembering the time you saved me/kept me safe/punched me in the face.

You are tired, I can see it in the way you turn your shoulder away from the detective, in the fan of your fingers covering your face, briefly, when you think he is distracted. It’s not rude (not that it matters) to leave. Besides, you have glanced back and have seen that I’m moving past boredom into something more dangerous, and soon I’ll start saying aloud what I’ve been deducing about this team of lackwits (including the unsanitary habits of the coroner’s assistant). You don’t have to repeat what you’ve already said, it’s their fault for not listening. Trust me, once you stop repeating yourself, they start listening.

John, your face reminds me of umeboshi. Hm, should not have said that particular thought out loud. They are not, in fact, what you and I would think of as plums, despite the name. More like pickled apricots. No, you are not dried up and sour. It’s just that sometimes your face is like that, and your brow drawn down by exhaustion.

Back at the flat (home), you declare it too early for bed (as though we have something resembling a regular schedule). I know it is because you don’t want to walk upstairs to your room alone. You start to make tea and stand there, in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost. You want me to put my arms around you, you need me to. John, you are so transparent. Divested of your oversized jacket, your jumper, and in only a thin t-shirt, you look nearly frail. Not eating enough. Is this a symptom of depression? When you look up at me, I see your periorbital hyperchromia is more severe than I’d realized. John, my worry for you is like a stone at the back of my throat.

So you make tea and I make toast. Any more than that and you will believe something is wrong. You sit on the sofa with your hands wrapped around your mug as if you are cold, though the flat is warm. Feeling sorry for yourself? I may be forced to do something barbaric to keep you from all that nasty introspection. Your thoughts on nights like this are so heavy, I hear them grinding away at you at night. It keeps me awake.

You lick butter and jam from your fingers after you eat the first slice of toast. I taste the unctuous slide of salt and sweet over my own tongue. I like it when we are silent like this. Normally I do. But I have seated myself too near you, this much is obvious. Your knee is so close to my leg that I can feel the heat of it through my trousers. I refuse the second slice, reminding myself that it is for you to eat, not so that I can watch your mouth and hands. John, you are the one that initiated a Very Serious Talk about Personal Space, so why do you keep (accidentally?) brushing me with your leg, your elbow?

You seem cold. And grey. I have been considering taking a case somewhere warm so that you can see the sun. We have received hundreds of requests for our (my) assistance outside of the United Kingdom; I have refused them all but now I find myself reconsidering. Spain, even Italy. There is the missing college student in Ibiza. (Obviously travelling with the girlfriend his parents don’t approve of. Dysfunctional family drama: dull. But I would take it, for you).

You warm when you are next to me. Your face flushes, your eyes throw off sparks (even my internal dialogue about you becomes strangely metaphoric). Your thin lips flare brightly pink and you slide your tongue across them. What? I’m sorry. Your eyes have grown cloudy, you think I’m not paying attention. “I’m sorry John, I can’t possibly understand you when you mumble.” Roll your eyes, continue on, good-naturedly. Because you are good natured. Your nature is good. Goodness is inherent in you.

I was right, that case was so predictable we’re already talking about something else, your hours at the surgery this morning. Your humour runs dark, John, tellingly dark. (That’s alright, sometimes I think gallows humour is the only sort I understand.) But your eyes are laughing as you continue on, your hands animated (and drawing me in). You could tell stories with your face and hands alone, they are so expressive.

You are like a child when you look up at me to ask if we’ll watch the rest of some silly television show we apparently started some other night. Of course. I could never bear to disappoint you (except when I must). I notice these things now, the sharp downturn of your head when you are disappointed (but put it aside). It has become part of a catalogue of of your emotions that I have indexed, and can refer back to whenever needed. (When I was away from you, I returned again and again to surprised/joyful/honest laugh, and I tried to avoid lost/hurt/helpless.)

You pull the throw over your knees, and (!) mine. I will say something, this can’t happen. I’m sorry (regret for what I must soon say flashing through me in shades of dark navy, it tastes of tannins and salt). But you edge closer, your hip against mine, your shoulder resting against me. I am struck by a passing aphasia, my protests never reach my lips and my treacherous body betrays me once again (a soft sigh of approval as warm hands gently and efficiently settle the blanket around my legs).

You are tired and (I) don’t want this night to end. You are sleepy and your voice comes low from your chest, the ends of your words disappearing. What are you talking about? Right, the television show. I haven’t been watching it (I’ve been watching you). Nod. Agree. Ignore the siren beginning to wail somewhere in my heart. The side of my body (where your body meets mine) is blazing.

Can’t swallow. Can’t think. How are you even doing this?

I should stop. Stop this. This is not how we keep each other safe, John.

I must move away. But first I must never stop touching you. I make room for you against me, put my arm behind you. Why am I doing that? We are not short on space. I have to get up immediately. Eyes half-lidded, you tuck yourself beside me, resting your face against my shoulder.

You wind your hand in the blanket at my waist. I remember to breathe. Bring my arm around you.

Extreme cases of hyperpyrexia have shown that a body temperature greater than forty one degrees celsius is extremely dangerous and likely to lead to sepsis or other serious medical conditions. So how is it possible that you feel so warm? I feel heat rising in my cheeks (in sympathy? they must be reflecting you, somehow).

I am always sensitive to touch, but the weight of your hand (over the blanket, at the waistband of my trousers) seems to change the gravitational pull of the earth. I stare down at you (it’s safe, your eyes are half closed and facing ahead, to the blinking television). John, whatever this is it’s very strange behavior. Not really my area. But I say nothing. Your body beside me is all loose limbs. I remember to relax and breathe again (sound comes out loud and jagged). I mustn’t allow it. You know that soon (too soon) I will have to push you away, I will have to say something cruel.

“This is nice.” you say softly into (the Egyptian cotton, british racing green, could be called dark hunter green of) my shirt. Something like sickness crawls up from my belly, wrings its way through my chest (nausea, nerves, excitement, arousal?). I find I cannot speak.

“Yes, it is.” The part of me that spoke preens, proudly self-satisfied and nearly glowing. Another part is screaming silently in frustration. Cup my hand around your head, fingers in ash and grey and blond. Surprisingly soft. John, your hair has grown long, you are far from your military habits. I could wind my fingers in it, tug your fringe (when it grows long like this, you tend to shake your head to the side when it falls to your forehead, despite the fact that it does not occlude your vision). I like it better like this. Softer. Like when you do not shave. Softer. Like your secret inside.

(I have touched your stubbled cheek, remember? It was years ago. Early autumn, weeks between any good cases. You were fighting off a headache, didn’t leave the flat all day. Neither did I. I don’t like it when you are ill, John. It seems the world has gone all wrong. That was the first time I made you toast. Butter and jam then, too. Hypoglycaemia and migraine are linked, but you know that. You felt better the next morning, relief ran through me (bright and undulating tones of fuchsia, with the taste of mint). I am not known for my self-restraint (except when it comes to you, though that is known only to me) so when you sat next to me at the table, the lines of your face blunted by blond and brown bristle, I reached my hand to your jaw. Same as your hair, softer than I’d thought. You took a long, slow breath through your nose, put your hand over mine. I left mine between your palm and cheek too long. Jerked it away. Your cobalt eyes said hurt but not surprise. “I wanted to...” my words fell back in my throat. You nod, sharply. “It’s alright.” You call the retreat, go somewhere inside yourself. Went on, drinking tea. Nothing changed. I could feel your cheek, your jaw beneath my hand for weeks.)

A strange feeling passes over me; I feel as though I had been weeping, or that I might in a moment. John, this is what your nearness does to me. The tiny movement of your face against my side: exquisite and excruciating.

How long has it been since you stopped denying you were my date and started wishing you could be? I now regret not listening closer when you talked to headwaiters, innkeepers, and booksellers. I should have been more careful. Should not have basked so long in the shine of your praise. I will never, ever leave you again (I promised, and I will not go back on my word, not to you, at least) but I should have pushed you away long before now. This doesn’t end well, not for either of us. I saw you wipe tears from your eyes (before they fell) the night you broke up with [Persian blue high heels, overloud laughter].

John, this doesn’t end well. I know this. Do you want that? Is this some slow suicide?

“Stop, just...stop.” you say (knowing my brain is racing), reclining against me, pulling your legs on to the sofa. You take me with you, arrange me with your hands until I am stretched out beside you, head against the arm of the sofa. How many times have I imagined this: your head resting on my shoulder, your hand on my chest, over the breastbone (sternum, gladiolus). I focused my imaginings on details I wanted to conjure up - I could smell your hair, touch the soft spot at the nape of your neck where your collar rests. I did not reckon that my keen senses would be thrown by my heart thumping in my chest, that my thoughts would be overtaken by joy/pleasure/excitement suffusing through me.

Every neuron is firing. I feel every inch of my body awake, aware (attuned to you, the deceptively small, powerful man pressed into my side). How can you be drifting off, John? You are the most opaque, impossible thing I’ve ever known. I’m nearly deafened by the rush of blood in my ears but I hear you give a nearly silent, satisfied sound. And it is the safest (most treacherous) thing I’ve ever known.

In time (incalculably short, or long, I can’t tell), you sleep. Your breathing becomes regular and the rhythmic rise of your chest against my ribcage becomes predictable. The conversation goes on with you, in my thoughts (as it always does, as it did even when I hadn’t seen you for years). To keep (us) this precious thing we have this safe, I long ago learned to never speak so many things aloud. I say them to you in the previously cavernous space of my mind, and sometimes you answer. But not often. It is enough that you listen (as you do in life).

The sound of you sleeping, the gentle rush of your breath. You tear apart things in me that have never been built.

I could not do more to drive you away. The things I have done to you, I have been unspeakably cruel. Redemption for such things is impossible, I know it to be true. And yet. And yet. You never stop looking for me. Looking at me. You stopped seeing the benefit of hiding beneath the name you could never pin down: colleague, friend, partner, (because none of those said how you felt, none of them said catalyst, spark, thing that lit the wildfire burning away at your heart). You started to let it show, first around the eyes (how your eyes speak volumes), then in your mouth (in the intimate smiles, the cheeky grin you reserve for me and me alone), and finally in your hands and your body (the way you started to reach for me, to touch me casually, in small, easy ways: your fingers wrapped around my wrist to direct me, your hand at the small of my back to reassure me).

I have nothing to offer you. What hope I once had died, on a roof, years ago. I was that man, the man who would do anything. The man who would burn. Now I have burned, now I have known terrible loneliness. I have become the thing I once feared. The thing I wanted above all others. You would call it broken. But it grants me clarity. It has allowed me to shuck off the weight of sentiment, the weight of longing. I no longer imagine a future because I will not have one. Without worry about what comes next, today is much easier to navigate. You, next to me, your golden honey lashes catching in the light of muted television, you make it all a lie.

The safety of the circle of your arms brings danger. A thousand futures bloom before me, incandescent and scintillating. You breathe once, and a thousand more appear.

This is how a mind tears itself apart.

You sleep on and I do not find the strength to do what I must. Already a sign that I am failing, that your kindness is my undoing. It is so like you to trust, to share your body like this. To ease yourself beside me (into this most dangerous place) and believe that I will keep you safe. And I will. I would kill for you (and I have). I would rip the world to shreds, I would burn it to ash and cinder before I let it tear you down. But I do not know how to keep you safe from me.

I am still. You know I can be still for hours. You dip into a deeper sleep, and I allow myself the luxury of touch: place my palm flat against your side, where the soft unprotected muscle meets your first floating ribs. Desire floods me and I realize the draw of my breath brings a weak, keening sound.

The sweep of your breath over me (turns my thoughts a vivid, violet-flavored celadon). Maybe this means nothing to you. Maybe this is lust or loneliness, it’s been ages since you last had a forgettable girlfriend. Maybe this is simply the hunger for closeness so many seem so eager to indulge. Yes, it’s nice, it’s more than nice, it’s wonderful but this isn’t ever enough, is it?

Already I give you so much (you give me so much). Strange melodies assault me when you are near, I try to compose and they interrupt, the music of your bones and thoughts, the symphony of you underlying all I hear and write. Even when I sleep I hear it, you, you, you everywhere (dreaming I am gutshot and dying in a damp alleyway, I hear you and know that if I reach out my hand, you will take it (take me to safety), I am dreaming I am lost in a maze without end, and I hear it, hear you, and know your voice will lead me home). I wake (desperate to kiss your mouth, to breathe the air you breathe) and you are never there, so I go to your door (to listen for you) (to worship at the altar of everything I’ve ever loved) (to find out if you’ve finally left me, slipped off quietly into the evening light). But there is nothing to be done, so I go back downstairs, and try to sleep again.

I have taken to imagining things that help me sleep. Flights of fancy/fantasy. At first it was simply referring back to the catalogue of your emotions, then when that wasn’t enough, I would focus on recalling a particular memory. I’m especially fond of the time you stood behind me while I was at my laptop. You leaned over me; you were close enough to kiss. So in my late-night imagination, we did. We do. But I mainly think of things like this, you asleep beside me. Your hand slipped into mine (that thought alone helped me find sleep for over eleven weeks, the feeling of you wrapping your hand in mine: if I concentrated hard enough it could fill my entire imagination, could nearly smother the burning/screaming fear that poured poison in my ear all night).

You speak the language of loving things, John. I beg you; do not speak to me. John, I beg you. Speak to me.

My thoughts are endless. I would silence them, be with you (instead of myself - ever present, ever-insistent).

You stir in your sleep, restless. Reach your arm across my chest, entwine your leg in mine. Warm. Soft. I hope/fear you will wake. And so you do, gradually pulling yourself toward wakefulness. I want to stay here, holding you (somewhere between sleep and awake).

You tip your chin up, blink slowly. Look into my eyes (a privilege not afforded to many, not that you would know). Even your smile is warm. Like you, John. All softness and hardness, angles and warmth. How is a thing like that possible?

I could kiss you.

So I do.

As I bring my lips to yours, you meet me, sliding up my side. (John: so attentive, so responsive.) Reaching for me. Press my lips to yours. Barely. John? John, _please._


	2. The Lightning-Forked Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inside the mind of Sherlock Holmes as his relationship with John Watson begins to change dramatically.
> 
> Currently no archive warnings needed, this does not apply to future chapters.

Hysteria pounds behind my eyes, desperate joy tearing from the back of my throat. The press of your lips against mine (I taste the lightning-forked sky, ozone born into the world with a sudden burst of electricity).

We do not return from this, John. Reality, everything we know, will be bisected into before and after this kiss.

Everything is you. Mouth against mine like the answer to a question I never asked. Gentle, sure. And hungry. Somatosensory cortex overwhelmed by you (five out of twelve cranial nerves are involved in kissing). Oxytocin (how it puts cocaine to shame!).

John, you are the whole world. You moving against my side sends a billowing warmth through me. The gentle part of your lips, breath tasting of tea and sleep. The pressure of your iliac crest against my transversus abdominis (desire a multifaceted thing, sparkling with colours that do not have names in any language I know). The slip of your tongue against my bottom lip sends electricity coursing from you to me, cutting off all conscious thought.

I freeze, only for a moment. But it’s enough to send you reeling, feet on the floor like punctuation, like the end of a sentence I never got to finish (please, John, wait, you know I sometimes need more time, please, more time). Already one step away by the time I’m upright.

“John, I...” throat constricts like an 19th century _Corynebacterium diphtheriae_ sufferer. Your hand flies up to hover before you. The universal signal for stop. So I do.

Looking down, away from me. Brow knitted.

So here we are. (I drink you in, even as it feels like all the air has been dashed from the room, that I’ll die of suffocation. Because these moments, the last ones I’ll have with you (because you will leave me as I have always feared) will be infinitely precious to me in the coming years. The dread of many days without you, leading me far away from that perfect second when I felt you settle your head on my shoulder).

Your hands are trembling.

“Sherlock...” your voice breaks and you hide your face behind your hands. “just don’t...”

There isn’t a choice, I bridge the gap with a single step. The subtle signals of instability. I wrap my arms around your shoulders just as your knees give way, kneecaps bobbing into my shins, I hold on tight. A grunt, as though the wind has been knocked out of you.

You must stop this. I do not have a heart to break, so how is that stricken look ripping mine apart? A study in impossible opposites: John Watson (how can you go so quickly from joy rippling through you that even I can feel it and then straight to a sense of loss so profound it is as though you may collapse in upon yourself?). All whilst the clangor of grief resounds so loudly within me that I feel it vibrating in my teeth.

Your chin caught at my clavicle sets my whole body afire.

You’re here with me, but I can already hear your footsteps on the stairs. John, you can’t go. This is your home. We built (and rebuilt) this life together. This is your home. I do not want to wake in the morning to find you have gone. Seeing you, haloed by early sunlight, hair damp from the shower, that is home. You are my home, John, as much as this flat. _Please. I have learned to satisfy myself with so little._

Even away from you, dappled morning sunlight carried echoes of home. I would watch motes of dust dancing on the eddies of air currents and think of you (and even now, remembering that time threatens to bring a terrible darkness upon me).

I will not let you go (maybe not ever) but I would like to see your face. And your eyes. Which will tell me what your voice cannot. You lift your chin, eyes meet mine with a thunderous finality.

“When I was a boy, I was once lost on Rannoch Moor. Did you know that, John?”

You murmur a no, eyes wide, and put your arms around my waist. Shift your footing. Stable again, as usual. Righting yourself against me (that’s new).

We could be dancing (I wish we were dancing).

“I was, it was on holiday. I’d run off on my own, looking for _Formica pratensis,_ a rare ant which hasn’t been seen there in some time...” your face, locked in a look of concerned confusion. This story has meaning, I assure you.

“I was lost on the moor. I let my emotions get the better of me, I was so frightened. There’s a sense of utter loneliness out there, the moor’s so alien and it seems like you may have lost contact with all of humankind, forever. I started running in one direction, I’m not even sure how I decided which way to start out. I could see myself hurt, dying in a patch of heather. But all of a sudden, I was at the loch. Stony banks and then those acres of deep blue ahead. I knew I was safe then.”

You swallow hard, looking up at me, ready to ask what I could possibly mean. I’m back there, sometimes, on the wild and endless moor, wind chilling me until I couldn’t feel my fingers. And then I come upon Loch Rannoch. To the bluest blue that ever was. Because it wasn’t just blue, but a rainbow of blue, with grey and green to highlight.The relief that I felt then, the sense that all would be set right.

“That’s how I feel, with you. That blue...I knew it’d lead me home. Your eyes...like that.” 

Your face softens, I feel whatever is in the air shatter. Your eyes are liquid and full of wonder. I could weep with relief. Your kind, open face. I can’t bear to look at you (your strangely childlike face broken in a grimace of concentration and fear, then marvelous surprise like the first taste of sweet). Bring my hand to your neck, fingertips sweeping your soft hair.

“John,” I whisper, kissing your forehead “I am afraid.”

You are in my arms, now. Not my imagination. What I do and say to you now will have consequences. I feel your heart racing, at this rate it may catch up to mine (thudding painfully in my chest). You hitch my hands in yours, draw them to you. You pull away just enough to look up at me, eyes like Loch Rannoch, like the sea, like every Turner painting fractured and dancing around your dark irises.

(And I hear my brother’s voice in my head. The night after I was found wandering the bank of Loch Rannoch. He sits on the edge of my bed, talking quietly. We have long learned to stay quiet, and out of the way. “That was very good, Sherlock,” (magnanimous bastard, but I warm to his praise, to my disgust). “it was clever of you to walk along the shore until you were spotted. You did exactly as you should. They say you should stay in one place if you are lost but we both know that isn’t true. The only one that can save you is _yourself.”_ )

And it’s a bitter truth. There are times when my thoughts fill everything in me, the whole room spells them out, my DNA rearranges itself to replicate and rereplicate them. Sometimes, there’s no room left for me at all.

There’s no center of gravity, John. We’re all spinning in directions we can’t explain. You’ll be lost to me (as you once were).

“I can’t do this.” Betrayed again by my body, words have a life of their own and must be spoken.

The painful jerk of you away from me (feels like I’ve lost something irreplaceable). First your back straightens and you pivot away, then you fold in half slightly as though struck by the impact of a bullet in the gut. Your eyes never meet mine, they skitter along the ground until you turn from me.

Every step takes you further away from the closest we’ve ever been.

(I once told you that you did not want to understand the things I’ve done to keep you safe. The things I still do. John, you do not understand how cruelty can be a tool because you never would use it. I never stop.)

You may feel safe to me, you may feel right in ways I can’t begin to communicate. But that doesn’t mean you are safe from me. I put your heart in a sniper’s scope.

Your feet on the stairs. But not out the door, just to your room. I hear the click of the door.

You (mis)understand me. The marriage of hope and dread, it creates a low hush somewhere behind my eyes, it rocks me back and forth, pulling my weight in one direction, then the other. A step towards the door (never made). A step towards my bedroom (a retreat, never made). Even my body tries to tear itself in two directions over you, John.

It is not that I believe myself fundamentally unloveable (though I do); it’s that I must weigh carefully the costs of love. When I complete that equation, I have always been able to come down on the side of reason. Of logic. It would turn me from The Work. John, you have seen that often only I am able to find the truth behind terrible things. Yes, I am clever. But I am also clear, clarity granted to me only because I purge myself of all weakness (especially that great weakness, love).

Except for you. My affection for towards you has been turned against me, but it has never ceased. Quite the contrary. My love for you has only grown after all we have seen together, you seem to choose this danger time and time again. My love for you the marker and the map that have brought me back from death. My love for you the hope that carried me through. John, my love for you the secret truth of my heart that I did not want to deduce. John, my love.

I do not fix what is broken. This love between us is now impossible to shift; it has grown fearsomely sizeable.

And it must be spoken. I let myself take another step towards you. The distance between here and your room like the unnavigable distance between stars. But here I am. At your door.

Knock, though you must have heard me come up the stairs.

Silence.

“John, please.”

I will break down this door, John. I have done it before (though never in my own home). An arpeggio of fear down my spine. Are you hurt? Hiding?

“John, there’s nowhere to go.” Window’s too high, you’ll have to come out. I’ll wait here as long as I need. I can be patient, when needs must. 

“No.” Your voice strangled with emotion. Crying? You mustn’t (a thread of regret and fear twists somewhere deep, the colour of coffee and taste of burnt sugar). My hand on the handle. “There isn’t anywhere I can go.” pain in your voice so clear and heavy I could dip a brush in it and paint for days.

Hopelessly rude, you’d say, but I open the door.

Head in hands, sitting at the edge of the bed. You startle at my appearance, stand before me.

Grief shrinks you. Your thin shoulders make it seem as though anyone could overpower you, your wrists delicate and childlike. John, you seem cold. I want to wrap you in my arms. But anger widens your eyes. I must explain.

Hands in fists at your sides.

“That was wrong of me.”

Your face hardens. A mask. I’m truly afraid now, I’ve gone somewhere I can’t return from (as I feared), said something I can’t take back.

“Just forget it, Sherlock.”

But when you say my name, John, the sound of it in your mouth. I want to taste it for myself (on my lips even now, the memory of yours).

Nostrils flare, pupils hide indigo. Dangerous (you are so dangerous, John Watson). You have always handled rejection easily, with humour. Something different here, though that’s what you think this is. Rejection.

Am I a fool? Should I have left you, let this pass? I wish that was still an option.

“No, John. I won’t. John, I wish...I want...”

Thrust of your jaw into the air, eyebrows lift.

“What? You want what, Sherlock? Because God knows, this has always been about what you want.”

Shake my head, the words are slow in coming. Lower my voice, you’re nearly shouting.

“No, no. I want...what you want.”

The senseless agony I have so long accepted is now too cumbersome to bear. I have been so foolish.

Reach for your shoulder. Fingers around your acromioclavicular joint, feel your pounding pulse, the tightness in your form (ready to throw me off).


	3. At the Edge of the Precipice

The world is coming apart at the seams, John. The horizon will split and madness will spill out. (It will be made of broken things, unknowable things, fearsome in a way we have not imagined.)

I’ve lived through the detonation of a bomb. It’s like this, smells of dust and fire and the burn of adrenaline and oxygen. Things uncovered by violence (what violence has been done here, what violence will be done?). The danger here feels so similar. (Imagine for a moment 221b (our home), destroyed by this. Plaster and smoke and burning books. Mugs for your tea, shattered. No, John. We mustn’t.)

With total frankness, I can tell you that I would kill anyone who hurt you, who made it so that your eyes are so wounded. (I have not been totally honest about my time away from you. You would be horrified, the brutality I was forced to endure and perpetuate is hateful to you. But so much of it was for you, the anonymous gift I gave you. You were with me always, when I was away, doing things that would sicken you, would disgust you.)

Will you let me touch you, John? (Soft, well-worn t-shirt like velvet beneath my fingers.) Don’t look away, that’s a trick you learned from me. Hand at your shoulder, still. Gentle. You are as tense and unsure as a wild animal (and I have spooked you).

Power bursting from you like nuclear fission; unseen, undeniable, unstoppable. Tastes of copper and earth and you shimmer through luminous neons.

“John.” Saying your name rights the spinning gyroscope I seem to have in place of a heart. “I misspoke.”

The well of tears in your eyes. John, kill me now because I cannot bear this (I know you are capable, I have seen you take a life). The wolves of madness howl just on the other side of this. I will be torn to pieces (I will think of you all the while).

It weighs on me (heavier than the density of this universe (and all other universes) before the Big Bang (the birth of existence, of width and breadth, must have also been the birth of facts, of knowing).

I am reaching for you across the continental divide, though the world is still quaking. Or maybe that’s the trembling tearing through me.

Your dark eyes meet mine. Is there room beneath the break of those waves, or will we drown here? I’m already beneath the surface of the water. As are you. (Hypoxia not the way I’d chose for you, John. Painful.)

I reach for you, as you have long reached for me.

“Misspoke?” you practically shout, “It was a mistake. Forget it. Pretend it never happened, Sherlock.” Tear your shoulder from my hand. (Mrs. Hudson can certainly hear. Are we having a “little domestic?” No. We are destroying bonds. Great power is released (exothermic nuclear processes provides approximately 13% of the world’s energy needs.) The power in tiny fractures is immense.)

John, remember please (the language of loving things/the taste of my name on your tongue/the feel of my bones beneath your clever hands). My lips and mouth struggle around morphemes and phonemes I have never even heard.

“Never happened?” My hand falls stupidly to my side (Slack and alone. Empty). I am going deaf. The terrible, discordant arias of this tragédie lyrique will leave me unable to hear anything again, ever.

“I beg you, John. Please don’t ask it of me. I will never forget. This will remain the most painful and perfect thing I have ever known. I’ll dream about it at night, I’ll replay it forever in my mind, I’ll write about it, think of ways I could have done things differently, how I could have ended this the right way.” Take a breath, and I go on, words are a poor tool for such fine work. (You say I never tire of hearing my own voice, but the truth is I am always trying to communicate with you, to you, to share even a portion of who I am so that you may see/may judge/may know the unutterable truth of me.) “Even now, I am memorizing everything about you, the lines of your body, the turn of your lips, the precise way your hair falls, angle of your hands and feet...the half-light through the window touching your face as _I wish I was touching you now._ ” Voice breaks. Nothing more to add to the list, or it will grow and grow and never stop.

Do not close your eyes, John. Look at me. I owe you/you owe me that much. Look at me, John.

“Sherlock -”

“But I will pretend, go back to pretending. Anything you ask.” But please do not ask it of me. This is dying. I know it now. This burning will consume me. All that’s to be left of me is ash, smoke.

(I have died before, but this is much, much worse.)

I am inventing new words for heartbreak at a terrific pace.

John you are so clever. Has your surprise and anger grown twisted and determined to tear me down? This is the way to do it. I’m afraid.

“I’m done pretending. Aren’t you?” More sure than I’ve ever been (though my voice is small). I’ll no longer allow it to trip behind your tongue, colour your every word with longing and worry.

“What are we _doing_?” Edging into hysteria. Don’t beg, John. Not from me.

You sit at the edge of your bed, clutching your waist as though in pain, folding yourself in half. Clever boy, making yourself a smaller target.

I seat myself next to you, intentionally close this time. Even time has grown confused, it takes on an eternity for you to turn to me. A single breath. I would breathe the same air as you. The foreign magnetics of you. The polarity of worlds I have never known.

Show me. Show me, John.

Your clever hand moves, rests lightly on my knee. Lean into you, the gravity of your beating heart disrupting my orbit forever. A whimper. Mine or yours. My hand on your forearm. Am I reading this as I should (an invitation)?

The surprise of your small smile. Warm.

John, you blaze like the sun. You’re blinding.

“Off to a rocky start.” a brave laugh in your voice. (Start? This is only the start of something? This is the start of something. Yes, the start. Only the beginning.) Everything you say sounds like forgiveness. It always has. You are the most forgiving person I have ever known, I suppose that makes us well suited, I am often unforgivable.

“I’m sorry.” I interrupt, (over)eager.

No fear of vulnerability on your kind face (how, John, how?).

Your hands on me, your kiss gentle and questioning.

Lips.

Soft.

El inicio. (La sonido que comienza una sinfonía. _Nuestra música_.)

Steel becomes skin, life breathed into my brittle core. Glaciers calving off the ice shelf shift less than this.

(Your room has changed so little (in some ways like you). I feel strangely at home here, with you. Of course, I know every detail of this room without you, but without you it is dead and lifeless, this soft wool blanket is as an exoskeleton of chitin (a beetle, the cast-off shell of a crab). Empty. As I feel/felt without you.)

Your mouth feels like wet silk, I taste rose and pine (sericum et rosea, sancta). The scrape of your teeth against my bottom lip and

Yes

oh, yes.

John, I am my own x axis. My own y. My equations are carefully balanced. You disrupt my formulae.

_I want you like the sea dreams of fire._

Everything is you. Your mouth like ink, you write this story. The story of us.

وأخشى

أستمع

(أنا لست خائفا)

A sense of connection I am wholly unfamiliar with, another world I do not presume to know. Often, those who have suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI) are unaware of any loss of function (anosognosia). Have I been recovering from a hemispherectomy and not known it? I feel righted in the world, as though half of all information has been missing until now. Perhaps a corpus callosotomy disconnected one half of my world with the other. Now you, you connect me. Connect me to life. Give me life. Breathe life into me. Breathe me.

La musique du corps (ton corps?). Et la coeur. La voix que je ne pas voulu entendre (ta voix?). Desire (in many languages, it looks the same).

This is what I have so longed for. This. This is perfect.

It is not often that I am wrong. In this case I was completely wrong. Whatever the cost, John, I will pay it. It will be worth it (you are worth it). L'argent. Mon esprit.

Language becomes unclear, pools in dubh agus dearg (my throat and mouth on foreign ground, brain struggles for pattern).

There is nothing safe in this, all safety is you and you topple me effortlessly (maybe not effortlessly, in every shift of your body I feel the weight you have (too long, far too long) bourne). Thank you, thank you, John. How did you manage it until now?

Wait.

No, I...

What comes next? (Nerves shout my anxieties, worry travels along my dendrites and axons at over 119 metres per second. Those fears travel from me to you broadcast on radio waves projected by my collapsing, spinning thoughts (or perhaps you see it on my face).)

I can’t breathe.

Not enough air.

(Can you, could you taste it in my mouth? A rush of adrenaline, bitter and metallic as an old coin.)

Autonomic nervous system has a siren of deafening scale.

The gentle petal of your tongue leaves my lips. (Your face and eyes are soft and seem to have created a new intimacy. Bedroom eyes? We are in your bedroom. Perhaps that phrase is not to be taken literally, but it can be, by happy coincidence.)

“Sherlock?”

“Hmm.” Yes, yes, _yes_ , what should I say so that you’ll kiss me again? Tell me, quickly. Quickly.

Keep my mouth near your cheek, frustration that I didn’t even know could exist throws itself against the wall of distance between us.

*

Each day never really ends, it bleeds into the next. The demarcation at midnight is totally arbitrary. And, oh, how my days ran together with you (when we ran together). How alive we were then, how we buzzed with potential. You thought so much of your life was over, and it hadn’t even begun.

And then I left you. I left you alone with a (psychosomatic) limp, with the burden of of love and loss beyond what you dreamt. I watched as entropy moved in, your careful systems in disarray. I left you. I left. And you fought it every moment.

(You knew me better than anyone ever has. You reached for my hand. You saw blood in the rainwater, and you still reached for my hand.

You reached for _me_. When you thought the world had ended (you reached for me). Reached past hope, into fevered nightmare.)

And the music stopped, for us both. I had not realized what it would mean to be without you.

I did not grieve; I was grief itself. Loss made manifest in the world. I lived in silence, John. Silence. Me. I lived in silence for so long. I appeared to live; I ate, I drank, I slept. And I dismantled the worst of Moriarty’s web, the ones that threatened you. I did it alone. And in silence. I spoke to you and nothing returned to me, I heard my own voice reverberating in the fathomless space you once occupied.

And over time, as the world started to become safe for you again (as I made it safe), I began to hear you again. I heard you everywhere (and you listened). I found if I spoke to you (as I always did), the music of your strange melodies would return to me. I gave life to the memory of you, to your ghost.

Because you were a ghost.

I saw you, John. I know. At first I spoke to the old you, the one from before. When I was so sure. And then I began to speak to you, the you I saw turning corners before I slipped into shadow, the John Watson on the train car next to mine. The security-camera photos shared pixelated versions of you, looking half-gone from the world.

I begged you to live. I stared at those glossy prints and I begged you to live. I argued you out of the terrible state you were in, I shouted at you, I asked for your help.

And because you are agreeable in so many ways (affable even when subjected to my abject cruelties), you listened. And you responded. Or the ghost of you did.

When I slept, I smelled chlorine, tasted iron and threw myself into the sky, again and again.

John, I lived alone.

And I insisted I did not love you. I watched you (re)create a life you did not want. (I came back to you. And I insisted I did not love you.)

I slept in tiny attic rooms, I curled myself into the memory of you, like a mollusc treasuring a single grain of sand. The world was flat and grey, achromatic and lacking in texture. I tasted nothing but echoes. But I dreamt, oh how I dreamt. Colour returned to me while I slept, brighter than before (brighter than anything possible, the world was saturated). Painted in broad strokes by an Impressionist god.

When I finally began to tremble with exhaustion, I’d throw myself down, reluctant. I discovered that if I thought of you, sleep came easier. Dreams were less likely to visit. In a few short days I started to long for bed, to urge myself stay awake longer and longer so that I could allow myself a few more moments to dwell on you.

*

“Alright?” your voice quiet, deeper than usual, breathed right next to my ear. Arousal. (Sounds good on you, you must know that.) Feels like the sound of that single word slithers on my skin.

Your hand, sliding up my arm (stroking me). I want to give in to a shiver. I won’t. Your touch is sure (you’ve done this before, many times). Kind, open face. Eyes half-lidded, low and full of intent. John, you don’t have to wear your heart on your sleeve. How you feel and what you think are so visible to anyone who knows how to look.

Something with wings flutters around a bit in my stomach.

“You said you couldn’t do this?” the gentle ask, drawing back your hand. Pulling away so that you can look me in the eye more easily. Neutral tone and expression, though it is clear that you are flushed with desire. Don’t want to stop but can’t possibly go on without knowing (Am I here? Am I with you?).

A tiny tremor (you tamp it down). Fear. Don’t be afraid, John. Not of me. Not any longer. We have balanced too long, here at the edge of the precipice. We are being acted on by an incredible force (disrupting inertia). Our footing was growing ever more tenuous. We are always moving, we crave danger. So we edge closer.

And now we fall. Would you wrap me in your arms (allay my fears with your strength, comfort me) so that we will land together?

“This is not really...” Look down, away. Can’t make myself more vulnerable. Why? You reach for the dark curtain of my fringe, tuck a curl behind my ear. (Such an intimacy, so tender. You would have denied yourself such an indulgence, previously. I would have denied you.)

“Your area, yeah, I know.” Almost a whisper. Your memory is accurate as ever (especially in regards to me). A rush of affection. I know you, John Watson. I know.

(Forgive me, John. Please. There’s so much to forgive.) I can learn. I can change.

You smile (encouraging me). Mirror neurons engage, or perhaps just the sight of your (brilliant) smile, and I smile back. “Perhaps it’s time I expanded my areas of expertise.”

You smile even wider, a burst of laughter. John. Please. What comes next? Nervous. I’m crisp, fragile. I can feel the seams on every bit of clothing I’m wearing.

“There’s so much to learn,” murmured into my mouth as you lean in to kiss me again. Show me, show me, show me. So much to learn.

My inexperience with sex. Yes. Practically known to the public by now (many unanswered comments of a prurient nature on your blog). Familiar to you. Wish it didn’t matter. (It does. Especially to you.) I am not particularly capable when it comes to dancing. Popular knowledge tells us that a man makes love like he dances. It is my fervent hope (I never knew I’d hoped this before now, perhaps I didn’t) that does not bear true. Most times, when I danced I was dying inside (fear and awkwardness at the immediacy and connection with a stranger, usually a woman).

My inexperience has been a choice, John. Of course, there was Victor. But that was nothing like this.

And this is like nothing else.

You must have invented this, John. Surely no one has ever felt this before.

(I’m uncertain. Is this right/what you like? Mouth responds naturally though I am on unfamiliar territory. _Again_.) Your tongue, your lips. Yes, John. Gentle (though you are practically refulgent with desire/arousal). Pull away (breathless), gasp for air, while pulling you close with my hands. One behind your neck, running fingers through your (soft) hair. Your mouth against mine (it belongs there).

(Now I know why people invoke a supernatural being while engaged in amorous activity.)

Salt taste of your skin. Ocean (of desire). Makes sense, there is something tidal here, immutable.

Every part of me alive (surging, singing with unfathomable emotion (love, love? John, is this love?) and desperate for you).


	4. An Extraordinary Delicacy of Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For my Watson, on the occasion of her birthday <3
> 
> (tw: threats of sexual violence, non-gory recollection of death, references to self-harm)

Want to lick the inside of your bottom lip again, taste the sweetness there. You pull away (again, why?).

Eyes like bromothymol blue: flittering between acidic gold, neutral green, and alkaline cobalt. You are reactive.

John, there is a scintillating kaleidoscope of colour behind my own eyes. Breathe in and it clears. Breathe out, it returns. Unfocus my eyes, it appears. Focus on you, it fades beneath the threshold of sensory input.

(Feeling strange. Nervous. Vulnerable? Haven’t felt like this in so long. (Whistling white watered silk ribbon of memory: Victor.) I’m an expert at making this not happen.)

Your face unreadable as you study me. Feel your gaze (another sort of caress) gather in certain spots, with your eyes you trace the shape of my lips, thread through my lashes.

You reach for me again.

I begged you not to forgive me, John. I begged. _I begged._ It would have been easier, you know. (I was ready to carry the weight of your rejection around with me forever, like an infection that could never heal. I wanted to feel it press against my chest at night until I couldn’t breathe; I wanted it to slowly poison me until everything I tasted was bitter and bloody.) _I wanted you to hit me,_ John. I wanted to be scarred (destroyed). Wanted your anger to consume me, wanted to be burnt, branded by it. (I wanted to die, blessed by your righteousness.)

Desperation in my trembling hands.

I am not used to being touched. (C'est un rêve. Je meurs.)

Heaving chest, breathing hard. Short breaths; am I hyperventilating?

Not sure where to touch. Want to be careful, am often careless.

A sigh like a song (yours). ¿Por qué mis pensamientos de la música? You rest your face in the nook of my neck, lips brushing my skin (warm whisper of breath). No hurry. My nervous system has burst into flames, electricity surging in my heart and you. are. in. no. hurry.

(Patience: never my strong suit. Mummy used to tell me that (Patience, mon fils. Tout ce qui doit arriver, arrivera.) when I got ahead of myself, when I’d start talking so quickly my mouth couldn’t keep up with my racing thoughts. Taught myself to speak faster, to remember more.)

_No crime scene has ever been as beautiful as you are now._

Tongue across your own lips. Yes. Taste me.

Bring my hand to rest at your jaw, palm cupping your face, fingers curled around the soft comma of your ear. (The pulse in your left common carotid is pounding, like someone banging at a door.)

(John, I once opened a vein so I could remember what it felt like to be alive, and it paled next to this. I watched a stream of plasma and haemoglobin colour the world crimson and then I wanted more. (Looked for the sense that there is anything beyond myself, that don’t have to watch, that I can be, can feel.) I don’t think I wanted to die, not really.)

You taste like gunpowder and sticky toffee pudding, did you know that?

 

**No one touches me, John. No one but you.**

 

Down a hall that smells of stone dust and naphthalene, there is a room, long undisturbed. Years (centuries?) ago, I packed away all of this. Put it there. It’s locked and there isn’t a key. This is not my life, it never was. Who would want to come home to me, who would want to wake up next to me every morning? John, my ways are not gentle.

Please. Let me reap what I have sown (sorrow). John, even my name is a watchword for finality. (And I am no phoenix; I will never learn to fly.)

All the same, I want this (you).

John, if I had drowned in Loch Rannoch, if I had broken my ankle and died of exposure, you’d be better off. (But I didn’t. And you met me. And now you can never go back.)

I am an eternity of locked doors. You laugh and say it is no matter. And your laugh is a key.

You lean back, against the headboard. I watch; I taste burnt almonds and know your thoughts must be scented with vetiver. (The smile is an invitation. So is the palm, warm on my shoulder.)

(I killed a man who threatened you, John (not a first, but in this case you were more than a thousand miles away). I was going to let him go, though he was absolutely vile. It gives me no joy to kill though I often feel no aversion to it. A pathetic attic room, smell of stale cigarette smoke and unwashed clothes. I hadn’t even touched him, but I knew our man was a bit nasty, so I’d taken the precaution of securing him (duct tape, kitchen chair). He wasn’t responding, though I can be quite convincing (nothing that would leave a scar). When he laughed, I realized I had underestimated Moriarty’s forethought. He spit in my face (he missed). Breath like rancid milk when he laughed again, said he’d tell me what I wanted to know. I was so relieved (been awake over 36 hours, staking out his route). Then he said “and after you’ve gone, I’ll find Harriet Watson and that little bird she’s shacked up with, fuck them both and then I’ll cut them both to pieces and mail them to your friend John. And then I’m going to kill him, but not straight away. I’m going to give him a week or two to think over what he’s done that lead to his sister being dismembered and packed into a cooler, and then I’ll kill him.” He laughed again, John. Like it was the punchline to a particularly funny joke. Laughed until he was wheezing, even after I hit him so hard the chair fell over, taking him down with it. He laughed whilst he asked me if he should mail me your heart. Laughed even when my knife was at his throat, fat ruby drops of blood already trickling down his neck. I may have been doing him a mercy, he may have just been goading me (Moran’s punishment would have been immeasurably worse) but he was a bad man who did very bad things and I couldn’t risk someone hurting you in that way. He had pictures of you on his laptop. He had Harry’s address. I don’t regret killing him. After, I couldn’t remember the sound of your voice for nearly eleven days. It was awful.)

(I’ve killed more people than I’ve ever loved. I didn’t mean to be this way.)

“I want to tell you how I feel, but it will go wrong again.” I breathe. Wait for you to speak. An encouraging smile instead. Concern and affection. I’m lost.

“I need you. To lead me where we’re supposed to go. I need you…” Words dissolve into their components, morphemes and phonemes, and they no longer arrange themselves into anything meaningful at all. (I’m sorry, John.)

“I need you, too.” The entire world should shiver apart hearing you speak. But I do not move, (I should). I’m sorry. I’ll never stop apologizing, John.

Gently pull me towards you. Wrap me in your arms.

I have known you so long. (Je tu connais depuis _si longtemps_. Toujours.)

I’ve always known you (no, but I should have). I didn’t know how everything was incomplete before you. How I longed for your voice (without knowing it). I thought I was there, in the silence. I defended it.

You are everything.

“I know which socks are your favorite.” You giggle (like you want to stop, but can’t.) It’s true; I know which socks are your favorite. I know precisely how many of our business cards are tucked into your wallet (four, there were seven until this afternoon). I know how old you were when Harry started drinking. I know nearly nothing about you. (I know everything about you.)

“I know you know.” and your lips against mine again, like laughter and the wings of tiny things.

(Warm.) Your arms around me like you created space for me. Like you built this place for me. (Dancing flare of broken stars behind my eyes.) I didn’t know fear and joy before now. Nervous. Want you, want more. Desire scrawled across reality like it has been reinvented in the shape of your low hum of pleasure.

There is a startling lack of symmetry here, John. You and I aren’t alike. But you fit against me like we grew here together. Like stable elements. Like logic (and what could be more pleasing?).

Head against your shoulder. Want to record the sound of your heart. Some time in the future I won’t be pressed against you, and although I’ll remember precisely the rhythms you create, it will only be an echo of this. Will preserve it in amber. Paint it on walls (canvas is too fragile. This fresco would be called _Ero Cieco: Apprendimento, L'ascolto_ ).

This is nothing I could have predicted, John. Not at all. I never dared hope. How far buried are my heart’s desires. (How far buried is my heart.)

I have no faith in this moment. I have not been this close to someone in more than ten years (far longer than that, but I do not want to stop and calculate those sad statistics).

Breathe. You. (Mind goes on singing: John, John, John, John…)

Your harmonies coming into focus. My hands on your back (you are so alive). There is something floral and soft filling my chest.

You are moving against me, sure and careful. Your hands frame my face, (yes, I really may be hyperventilating). Kiss my cheek, my temple, then my forehead at the hairline. Gentle. Your breathing: slow and deep.

I’m unwound.

Exhaustion sweeps me like heavy rain, batters against every inch of my skin. How? I never sleep when I’m unsafe, and this is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done (risked it all. Funny, I thought it was you with a taste for the wager).

_Oh, John, a black dog has haunted my every move. I dare not set him on you._

(I collapse inward like a dying star.) I can’t move.

You look down and I look up. Matching movements like they were coordinated by skilled choreographers. Your face is the only one I’ve ever wanted to see (been afraid of seeing). Your hand at the button at my collar. I watch as you flick it open. Oh,...oh! Yes.

Right.

My chest, bare beneath. A triangle of white, brushed by your ivory fingers. I am ready. (Am I ready?) Under my skin I’m made of metal and shards of glass. Be careful, John. You could be hurt. (You will be hurt.) Under my skin I’m circuitry and ice, I’m not like you. I do not fix what is broken. (I am broken.) Entropy is the world I know. Under my skin I am bursting with light. Everything tastes of morphine and honey.

I would forsake all for you, John. I have. My name. My life. I can’t translate this into words, John. Even in my own thoughts.

You stroke my back with your other hand, gently. Gentle. Like you’re soothing over an injury, like you’re comforting me. And I take comfort in you, John. I always do. I lean in to your touch, relax against you (tension stringing me up every chance it gets).

My fantasies were only a pale shadow of this vivid reality. You are more addictive, by far, than cocaine (more satisfying).

Look into your eyes. Oh John, your face. On your face, I could read everything you ever thought, everything you ever dreamt. (Lips: amaranth pink and scarlet, cresting into cerise.) I have studied your face for hours. In every light, from every angle. But you have never looked at me like this. I taste ginger, sliding colours like dazzling opal.

Folded into your arms, I feel something viscous/slick/dark recede into my bones. Now there is room for this blinding brightness. I feel the furthest I’ve ever been from mechanical. How can a clockwork heart begin to beat again? It’s impossible. This is impossible.

You know the secret names of my paths, John. I burn for you, John. Oh, I burn.

My cheek against your chest, your fingers stroking my hair, my scalp. Say my name again, John. _Sing it like a song so that I can hear it move inside you._ In harmony with your strange melodies, John. I didn’t fit there (I never fit there) when I made my own music. It was a song composed by you, and you alone. I never thought you could rewrite it. Never dreamt you could (would) for me. When I am wrong (which is not often) it is most frequently because I have underestimated you. This isn’t hubris; one can learn all there is to know about you at a single glance.

Your warmth, this music, it brings me to a place between sleeping and waking (I could be dreaming; am I dreaming?). Warm. Rise and fall of your chest. My palm settled on the flat plane of your belly. Coursing with excitement. Sleep. Hold me, guard me, keep me safe (as you always do, my soldier).

Sleep.

Wake. Clinging to you like a child. You pull me closer.

Sleep.

Gumising. Ang karagatan? Hindi, ang ritmo ng hininga.

Matulog.

Dream of things going wrong in Serbia. Your face flashes in my mind as Moran’s bullet enters my chest. Жао ми је, Џон. Жао ми је. (Reality: I never even saw Moran until after Paris.)

Wake. You murmur sleepy, wordless kindnesses until I am calm again in your arms. Your t-shirt is damp where my face was. (I’m sorry, John.)

Sleep.

Wake. Lost on Lake Rannoch. Sun’s all wrong. Getting cold.

Reach for the side of the bed where you should be.

Empty.

No, no no.

Mein Herz…

Natürlich. Ich bin ein Narr.

I know what it means to wake alone, John. I know. I know.

(This isn’t the first time I’ve awoken to a cold pillow next to mine. Remember: the crush of velvet under the pads of my fingers. It falls to powder under my hands, like the dry wings of moths.)

I know what goodbye looks like (crisp linens coloured by the watery sunlight of dawn). I know how to fold myself up, how to take down the lights, how to wear a blank face. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m an expert.

But not yet. Can’t shut it all down yet. Now I want to savor the hurt before the nothingness, before the silence. Oh, John Watson, I am a fool. And I am sorry, I am so sorry. Swallow down great gulps of air in an effort to prevent hysterical/childish/absurd sobbing.

(What have I done wrong? Oh, for god’s sake, what have I done this time? It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Can’t matter. And now, now he knows. John knows. I’ll look at him, forever, across the breakfast things and his forgiving eyes will stare back right into me because he knows. I knew this would happen. I can’t be surprised. Last night there was anger and want (and I thought, forgiveness) and I pushed too hard and I didn’t notice when things were broken and oh god, John, I’m not gentle, I do not fix what is broken, I only find the cause but now the cause has escaped me, the precise cause but no, no, no I know I know generally the impetus for this break, it’s me and I’m the cause and I’ve done it again and I shall never, ever stop.)

It’s times like these I need cocaine more than air, to stop my heart and start my brain.

I am alone and I am lost on the moor.

Mycroft was right, but this time I will never find a break in the boundless green.

I will never see the shore (je suis perdu).


End file.
